Westworld‘s season three premiere introduced Rehoboam. It’s The System that “saved” the world, but not because it predicts mankind’s future. Rehoboam writes it. That ominous and mysterious machine, with its algorithms and “strategies,” has created a “path” forward for all of humanity. It can do that because people themselves are predictable. Hosts aren’t though, and Rehoboam has no way of dealing with someone like Dolores. It’s why the man who controls The System, Vincent Cassel’s Engerraund Serac, has turned to Maeve to stop her. But even that might not be enough, because as he said the war is already over.
The only question is whether Maeve can make sure any humans or hosts are still standing when the fighting stops.
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Looks Like Spoilers to Me
Serac took Maeve’s control unit from Westworld because he thought she represented the greatest danger to mankind. Maeve was the one who rewrote her own code, controlled other hosts with her mind, and faced down an entire army. She proved her talents when she managed to identity and escape Serac’s virtual Warworld prison. He was right not to “underestimate” her abilities. But while she was in his virtual “cage,” divergences kept happening in the real world. And now Serac understands who is really responsible for them, and it isn’t Maeve.
“Up until very recently The System was working. We were creating a better world. And then it stopped. I thought I had discovered the reason—the emergence of someone very dangerous. Someone we couldn’t predict. You. But I was wrong. We learned that only this morning shortly before you killed several of my staff. You aren’t the threat. There’s someone we haven’t accounted for.”
He didn’t account for Dolores. And her quest to wipe out mankind is the real threat. It’s a fight humanity doesn’t even know has begun. But that’s not why it’s so scary.
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“We are in the middle of a war, and I need your help to win it,” Serac said to Maeve. “No one knows it’s happened yet, or that it’s already been lost.”
If anyone else said this secret war was already lost it would sound like a dire prediction from a pessimist. But as Serac said, he is no oracle. Rehoboam writes the future, letting him know what will happen. When he says the war has already been lost it’s not a forecast. It’s a fact. Humans won’t win.
But if he knows that, why even turn to Maeve at all? “If things continue on this path” and “there isn’t any future,” at least for his “kind,” why fight at all? For the same reason The System can’t predict what Dolores will do. Maeve can “beat” the future because she’s not human.
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Rehoboam works because mankind is predictable. That’s what Dolores learned in the Forge at Westworld. (The same place Maeve visited virtually in this episode.) Humans are basically algorithms that always end up in the same spot no matter what. They can’t escape their loops. Rehoboam is based on this idea. Hosts aren’t predictable though. They can change and adapt. Dolores and Bernard both did in season two. And Maeve might be the most adaptable of them all. Therefore Dolores can’t predict what Maeve will do, just like Rehoboam can’t.
The only way to beat Dolores and The System—and therefore change the outcome of a lost war—is by having Maeve fight in it. Why would she though? She doesn’t care about mankind’s little “squabbles.” Serac said hopefully the “next time” he talks to Maeve he can “persuade” her their “interests are aligned.”
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She might not know why their interests are aligned but we might. Bernard doesn’t trust Dolores and fears she might have brought him back as a pawn in her war. But he also thinks Dolores doesn’t trust herself. Dolores knows she might go too far in her hatred and zest. Bernard said he might be a check on her own power. And since Dolores wants to save her own kind, she’ll need Bernard to make sure she doesn’t accidentally destroy everything, human and host alike.
Maeve doesn’t want hosts destroyed either. To make sure that doesn’t happen she might have to save mankind too. And unlike Dolores, Maeve might realize she wants to save humanity anyway. The real Lee Sizemore showed her not all people are bad, even if they are predictable.
Featured Image: HBO
